servant, sent on with my evening clothes, that I might accept an
invitation (by telegram) to dine with the Crown Princess. I had only
eight minutes before the royal train came up, and it was an awful
scramble to wash and dress in a room the servant had taken at the
station. However, when the royal train set off, I was in it. The
palace-station of Wildpark was a pretty sight, red cloth laid down
everywhere, and sixteen royal carriages waiting for the immense
multitude of guests--quantities of ladies in evening dress (all black
for the King of Hanover) and veils, splendid-looking officers, an
Armenian archbishop and bishop in quaint black hoods and splendid
diamond crosses. I went in a carriage with the Greek minister, and we
whirled away through the green avenues to the great Neue Palais, with
the sun striking warm on the old red and grey front. Count Eulenborg,
Master of the Household, stood on the steps to receive us, and we passed
into an immense hall, like a huge grotto, decorated with shells and
fountains, where several of the court ladies were.
“At the end of the hall were some folding-doors closely watched by two
aides-de-camp, till the rapping of a silver stick was heard from a
distant pavement, when the doors were flung open, and Count Eulenborg
came out, preceding the Prince and Princess. She immediately went up to
Mrs. Grant (General Grant’s wife) and several other ladies, and then
began to go the round of the guests. I had more than my fair share of
her kindly presence. ‘Oh, Mr. Hare, I am so glad to see you again so
soon. How little I expected it, and how sad the causes which have
brought it about!’ And she went on to speak of how, at our last meeting,
the Duchess of Argyll had been sitting with her at tea, and how three
days after she died. ‘And for me it was only the opening act of a
tragedy,’ she said. She talked of the shock which the news of the attack
upon the Emperor was to her, coming to her in the picture-gallery at
Panshanger, and of her hurried journey to him. The Crown Prince came up
then, and led her away to dinner. Mrs. Grant was on his other side
(General Grant, a very vulgar officious man, was also there). I had been
directed to a place near the Archbishop and Bishop of Armenia, but as
they only spoke Armenian, I was glad that a very handsome, agreeable
aide-de-camp eventually took his place between me and them. The dinner
was excellent, in a huge long marble hall, with windows opening to the
ground on the terrace above the flower-garden. Occasionally I met a
bright kindly smile as the Princess looked to see how I was getting on.
There were about fifty guests, servants waiting noiselessly, not a
footfall heard.
“After dinner we all went out on the terraces, and there the Crown
Princess had the goodness to come again to me. She talked of all I had
seen at Berlin, and of Sweden and Queen Sophie. She talked also of Queen
Louisa, her husband’s grandmother, preferring her statue at Potsdam even
to that at Charlottenburg, and wished to have sent an aide-de-camp with
me to see it. She was so good as to desire that I should return to
Potsdam, and when I showed her that I could not, said, ‘Oh, but you will
now find your way again to Berlin to see me.’ The scene on the terraces
was very pretty, looking upon the bright flowers beneath in the subdued
light of a fine evening in this transparent atmosphere, the whole air
scented with lime-flowers.
“At a quarter to nine all the carriages came again to take us away:
Count Eulenborg announced them. In the ante-chamber I found the Crown
Princess again. I kissed her hand, and she shook mine with many kind
words, and sent affectionate messages to the Queen of Sweden.
“How we whirled away through the green avenues to Potsdam, where all the
people turned out to see the cavalcade! I travelled back to Berlin with
the young and very handsome Prince Friedrich of Hohenzollern (brother of
the Prince of Roumania and the Comtesse de Flandres), who was saved in
the annihilation of his regiment of guards in the second battle of Metz
by being sent back with the standard.”
* * * * *
“_July 5._--I spent Sunday at beautiful old Lübeck, full of colour and
rich architecture, rising spire upon spire above the limpid river. In
the streets and market-place are the quaintest towers, turrets,
tourelles, but all end in spires. A great fat constable went about on
Sunday morning, keeping everybody from following any avocation whatever
during church-time: when the services were over, they might do what they
liked.
“Then came the long weary journey across West Holstein--peat flats
varied by marshy swamps--and a night at Schleswig, a white, colourless
old town moored as if upon a raft in the marshes, where the Princess of
Wales’ grandmother and other royal potentates lie in exposed coffins
upon the floor of the ugly rugged old cathedral, which has a belfry like
a dovecot. Everywhere roses grew in the streets on the house-walls. The
children were hurrying along, _carrying_ the shoes they were to wear in
school.
[Illustration: THE ROSENBORG PALACE, COPENHAGEN.][288]
“Peat and marsh again for many hours, the interminable straight lines of
landscape only broken by the mounds, probably sepulchral, which are so
common here. A straight line with humps at intervals would do for a view
almost anywhere in Jutland, Fuhnen, or Seeland. After hours upon hours
of this engaging scenery, we crossed the Middelfardt at Fredericia into
Fuhnen, which we traversed by rail, and embarked again on the Great Belt
at Nyborg. Then came four hours’ more rail in Seeland, and, at 10.30
P.M., long lines of light glistening on streets of water showed that we
had reached Copenhagen. Here I met the two daughters of Sir Henry
Holland (Caroline and Gertrude), with whom I had arranged to go on to
Norway, and their niece, Miss Chenda Buxton. As they had already been
waiting for me several days, I felt obliged to give up a visit to Baron
Troll (the stepson of Madame de Bülow) and the château of Gaüno, but I
had three full days for Copenhagen, and greatly enjoyed them, the air
being that of the high mountains in Switzerland with a mixture of
sea--the most bracing place I ever was in. There is a ‘Dragon Tower,’
which is quite ideally Danish; and the old palace of the Danish kings,
Rosenborg, surrounded by a moat, is fairy-like in the beauty of its old
age, in the midst of a stately and brilliant old garden, and filled with
historical memorials, which carry you back into marvellous depths of
Danish history, in which the Christians and Friedrichs, always
alternating with each other, are most bewildering. The museums also are
full of interest, especially the Thorwaldsen collection, with casts of
all the works of the great sculptor, and many most grand originals,
especially interesting to me, as being described in Madame de Bunsen’s
letters from Rome in their first conception and progress.
[Illustration: ROESKILDE.]
“One day we went out to Roeskilde, to the great church near a fiord
where the kings are buried. Some of the older sovereigns have grand
tombs, but those of later date than the grandfather of our Charles I.
lie in their black and silver coffins unburied upon the floor of the
church, with very odd effect.”
* * * * *
“_Stockholm, Grand Hotel Rydberg, July 13._--On the evening of the 5th
we crossed to Helsingfors in Sweden by a very rough passage of ten
minutes, and had a wild evening walk in the storm, looking upon the
opposite Danish coast, and Helsingborg with the great traditional castle
of Hamlet, whose father was really a pirate-chief in Jutland.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF ELSINORE.]
“A journey of twenty-four hours brought us to Stockholm. We only
lingered on the way to see the very fine Cathedral of Lund, the Oxford
of Sweden. The scenery is not beautiful, but pretty--an exaggerated
Surrey, low hills and endless fir-woods, with tiny glistening lakes.
[Illustration: THE JUNCTION OF LAKE MALAR AND THE BALTIC, STOCKHOLM.]
“Stockholm has deeply interested us, and there is an odd feeling in
being at a place and knowing that it is for once and once only in a
lifetime. It is a modern city of ugly streets, but in a situation quite
exquisite, on a number of little rocky islets between Lake Malar and
the Baltic, surrounding, on the central islet, the huge palace, which is
very stately and imposing from its size, and the old church of
Riddarholmen, where Gustavus Adolphus and many other kings and queens
are buried under the banner-hung arches. Next to the palace, the
stateliest building is certainly this hotel, where our windows overlook
all that is most characteristic in the place, the bridge which crosses
the junction of the Baltic and Lake Malar, the mighty palace dominating
the central island, the great white seagulls poised upon the blue
waters, and the steam-gondolas, filled with people, darting to and from
one island to another. These are the chief means of communication, and
we make great use of them, the passages costing twelve öere, or one
penny.
[Illustration: RIDDARHOLMEN.]
“We shall not go to see the midnight sun at Hammerfest; it would be very
fatiguing, and indeed there can be little to see which we have not here;
for we have only about two hours’ night in Stockholm, and by 2 A.M. it
is light enough to read the smallest print. This has a very odd effect
at first, but one soon gets used to it.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF OLD UPSALA.]
“Alas! we have been here a week, and, except one day, it has rained
almost incessantly. One pities the poor Swedes in losing their short
summer, for there are only about three months without snow, and every
day is precious. The streets are sopping, but we have managed several
excursions in the covered gondolas to quiet damp old palaces on the
banks of lonely fiords. On our one fine day we went to Upsala by rail,
and saw the cathedral where Gustavus Wasa lies aloft on a great tomb
between his two pretty little wives, and we drove on to Old Upsala,
where Odin, Thor, and Freya reigned as human beings and were buried as
gods. In the tomb of Thor--a grassy mound--the Government still gives
the mead of ancient times to foreign visitors. It is a very delightful
place, like a dip in the Sussex downs, the quaint church, of immemorial
antiquity, probably once a pagan temple, nestling behind the mounds of
the heroes.
“Yesterday we heard a hundred Upsala students, the best singers in the
world, sing the best national music in the Caterina Church. The King was
there, a noble royal figure. He is _the_ sovereign of the age, artist,
poet, equally at home in all modern languages and several ancient ones,
profoundly versed in all his duties and nobly performing them. The Crown
Prince was with him, a fine young fellow, spoilt in appearance by his
mother’s Nassau mouth, and the Prince Imperial, who is here with his
cousins on a visit. The Queen is still away. I had many introductions
here, but as the Court is at the country palace of Drottningholm, have
not thought it worth while to present them; generally, however, Swedes
are quite charming, especially in their manner to strangers.
“Cheating or imposition in hotels or elsewhere is utterly unknown; the
only fear is lest you should not be charged enough. We asked what we
should do with our luggage if we went to Dalecarlia--‘Oh, you can leave
it anywhere under a bush, no one would touch a thing,’ and I am sure
that it is so.
“The Hollands are delightful companions, full of interest in everything,
glad to draw, reading up all the history, learning Swedish, holding
historical and retrospective examinations once a week. We do a great
deal of ‘lessons’ together. Certainly that one’s travels should ‘leave a
good taste’ behind entirely depends upon one’s companions. And we are
never even reduced to the state which I find alluded to in a French
guide-book--‘Dans une voiture découverte, quand il y a une personne de
mauvaise humeur, les autres admirent le paysage.’ Mr. and Mrs. Eric
Magnusson are in this hotel, and we see a good deal of them. He is an
Icelander, but now a Professor at Cambridge, and sent here by the
University to investigate and inspect the Runic inscriptions.”
[Illustration: GRIPSHOLM.]
* * * * *
“_July 15._--Yesterday we steamed down Lake Malar to Gripsholm, a very
quaint castle with domed red towers, full of ancient pictures, and with
the wonderful old room and bed where Queen Catherine Jagellonica
(delightful name!), whose tomb we saw at Upsala, gave birth to her son
Sigismund, afterwards King of Poland.”
* * * * *
“_Throndtjem, July 28._--Surely this old cradle of Northern Christianity
is one of the most beautiful places in the world. No one had ever told
us about it, and we came here only because it was the Throndtjem of
sagas and ballads, and expecting a wonderful and beautiful cathedral;
but it is really a dream of loveliness, so exquisite in the soft silvery
morning lights on the fiords and purple mountain ranges, and the nearer
hills covered with bilberries and breaking into steep cliffs, that one
remains in a state of transport, which is at a climax when all is
engraven upon an opal sunset sky, and when ships and buildings meet
their double in the still transparent water. Each old wide street of
curious wooden houses displays a new vista of sea, of rocky
promontories, of woods dipping into the water, and at the end of the
chief street is the grey massive cathedral of St. Olaf, where Northern
art and poetry have exhausted their loveliest and most poetic fancies
around the grave of the national hero. Here alone in Scandinavia I have
gone back perpetually to the old days of my life, and felt how happy the
mother would have been here, so much--almost everything--being within
her own walk; and I seem to see our trio spending a quiet month at this
homelike hotel (where the landlord and landlady--highly educated people
of good family--receive their guests like friends in a country-house),
and sallying forth to draw in all the sheltered coves and wooded rocks
by the side of fiord or river. The air too is most bracing, an arctic
feeling combined with the brightest sunshine.
“My companions and I get on perfectly, and I am filled with admiration
of Miss Holland’s strong, decided nature, and her perfect knowledge of
all she wishes and intends, combined with great good-nature. Both
sisters take boundless interest in all they see, and the journeys seem
shortened by alternate lessons in history, Norsk, &c., and games of
different kinds, even charades, one side of the carriage acting against
the other!
“But I must go back to Kristiania, which was steaming in intensity of
heat when we reached it, the wet of Stockholm having cleared in Norway
into cloudless sunshine which had hatched all the mosquitoes. There is
no beauty in the mean little town, which was built by Christian IV.
(brother of our Anne of Denmark), and has a good central church of his
time. We went by rail to Kongsberg, a primitive place with a nice little
hotel kept by a Dane, where, however (and at many other places), we were
annoyed by the ludicrously consequential advent of General Grant and Co.
Here we hired a carriage and carriole for a five days’ excursion in
Tellemarken. What a drive!--by silent lakes or through deep, beautiful,
ever-varying woods of noble pine-trees, rising from thickets of juniper,
bilberries, and cranberries. The loveliest mountain flowers grow in
these woods--huge larkspurs of rank luxuriant foliage and flowers of
faint dead blue, pinks, stagmoss--wreathing around the grey rocks, and
delicate lovely soldanellas drooping in the still recesses. But what a
road, or rather what a want of one!--hills of glassy rock, up which our
horses scrambled like cats, abysses where they gathered up their legs
and flung themselves down headlong with the carriages on the top of
them, till at the bottom we were all buried in dust, and picked
ourselves up, gasping and gulping, and wondering we were alive, to begin
the same pantomime over again.
“Our midday halt was at Bolkesjö, where the forest opens to green lawns,
hill-set, with a charming view down their smooth declivities upon a
many-bayed lake with mountain distances. Here, in a group of old brown
farm-buildings, covered with rude picturesque painting and sculpture, is
a farmhouse inhabited by its primitive owners through many generations.
The little rooms and their furniture are painted and carved with mottoes
and texts, and portraits with autographs of royal visitors hang on the
walls. The entrance to the cellar was under the bed. ‘Ajö, ajö,’
exclaimed Miss Buxton, in our newly acquired Norsk, as the old landlady
descended into it to get us some ale.
“We arrived at the little châlet of Tinoset on the wrong day for the
steamer down its lake, and had to engage a private boat. The little lake
was lashed by the wind into furious purple billows, and the voyage was
most wretched. A horrid male creature from Middlesborough, whom we
surnamed the ‘Bumble Bee,’ accompanied us. I was brutal enough to make
him over to Miss Holland, by saying, ‘This lady will be deeply
interested to hear all you have to say,’ and to her he buzzed on
perpetually. He told us that the people of Middlesborough were
astonished--and no wonder--at his building in the midst of that hideous
red manufacturing place a black and white timber house in imitation of
one at Coventry, and designing to be carved on its barge-board the
charming inscription--
‘Ye beastes who passe admire ye goode
Which thys manne didde whereer he coulde.’
[Illustration: BOLKESJÖ.]
“From our landing-place at Strand we had several hours’ drive along an
unprotected precipice to the Rjukan-foss, the 560 feet high fall of a
mountain torrent into a black rift in the hills. It is a boiling,
roaring abyss of waters, with drifts of spray which are visible for
miles before the fall can be seen itself, but the whole is scarcely
worth the trouble of getting there, though a little mountain inn, with a
well-earned dinner of trout and ale, and a quiet hour amongst the great
grey larkspurs, furnish pleasant recollections.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF HITTERDAL.]
“As we returned to Kongsberg, we stopped to see Hitterdal, the
date-forgotten old wooden church so familiar from picture-books. Here we
were told by our landlady that she would not give us any dinner--‘Nei,
nei, nothing would induce her; perhaps the woman at the house with the
flag would give us some.’ So, hungry and faint, Miss Holland and I
sallied out as _avant-couriers_ to the house with the flag. All was
silent and deserted except for a dog, who received us furiously. Having
pacified him, and finding the front door locked, we made good our
entrance at the back, examined the kitchen, pried into all the
cupboards, lifted the lids of all the saucepans, and not till we had
searched everything for food ineffectually, were met by the lady of the
house, a pleasant young lady, speaking English perfectly, who informed
us, with no small surprise at our conduct, that we had been committing a
raid upon her private residence. Afterwards we found a lonely farmhouse,
where also there had once been a flag, where they gave us a very good
dinner. Two young girls, whom we had first met at the Rjukan-foss, dined
with us, and made us acquainted with their parents. The father, an old
man who smoked an enormously long pipe, turned out to be the Bishop of
Christiansand.
“On the 25th we started from Kristiania for Throndtjem, the whole
journey of three hundred and sixty miles very comfortable and only
costing thirty francs. There is no great beauty in the scenery, but
pleasant variety--rail to Eidswold, with bilberries and strawberries in
birch baskets for sale at the railway-stations: a vibrating steamer on
the long dull Miosen lake: railway again, with some of the carriages
open at the sides: a night at Koppang, a large station, where several
people, strangers to each other, are expected to share the same room. On
the second day the scenery improves; the railway sometimes runs along,
sometimes over the river, till the gorge of mountains opens beyond
Storen into a rich open country, with turfy mounds which reminded us of
the graves of the hero-gods of Upsala, till, beyond the deep cleft in
which the river Nid runs between lines of old painted wooden warehouses,
rises the burial-place of St. Olaf, the centre of Northern Christianity,
the shrine of Northern faith, the stumpy-towered cathedral of
Throndtjem.
“The most northern railway station and the most northern cathedral in
Europe.”
[Illustration: THRONDTJEM FIORD.]
* * * * *
“_August 8._--To the last the unspeakable beauty of Throndtjem grew upon
us. It is not at first sight of its wide streets of low timber houses,
or even of its fiord with purple mountain background, or of its glorious
cathedral in the wide-spreading churchyard, which is the town-garden as
well as the centre of all its sympathies, that you learn to admire it,
but after many sunsets have turned the fiord into rippling gold, and
sent an amethystine glow over the mountains, and after many rambles
along the shores to rocky points and bosky hillocks.
[Illustration: THRONDTJEM CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: S. OLAF’S WELL.]
“After much indecision, we determined to return from Throndtjem by road,
and engaged two carriages at Storen, with a pleasant boy named Johann as
a driver. At every ‘station’ we changed horses, which were sent back by
a boy who perched on the luggage behind, and we marked our distances by
calling our single carriole horses after the kings of England. Thus,
setting off from Storen with William the Conqueror, we drove into the
Romsdal with Edward VI., but (after a drive with Lady Jane Grey) setting
off again with Bloody Mary, our kings of England failed us long before
our driving was over, and we used up the kings of Rome also. It was a
very wild interesting life, and there was a great charm in going on and
on into the unknown, meeting no one, dining on trout and pancakes at a
station at midday, sleeping in odd, primitive, but always clean rooms,
and setting off again at 5.30 or 6 A.M. There are bears and wolves in
the forest, but we never saw any. Their skins, shot during the winter,
are hanging up in almost all our sleeping-places. The prices are
extraordinarily low, and the homely, cordial people kissed our hands
all round on receiving the smallest gratuity, twopence halfpenny being
a source of ecstatic bliss. But the journeys were tremendous, as we were
sometimes called at four, and did not get in till twelve at night.
[Illustration: IN THE ROMSDAL.]
There was for a long time nothing especially fine in the scenery, except
one gorge of old weird pine-trees in a rift of purple mountain, and the
high moorland above Jerkinn, where the great ranges of white Sneehatten
rise above the yellow grey of the Dovre Fyeld, hoary with reindeer moss.
From Dombaas, we turned aside down the Romsdal, which soon became
beautiful, as the road wound above a chrysopraz river, broken by many
rocky islets, and swirling into many waterfalls, but always equally
radiant, equally transparent, till its colour is washed out by the
melting snows in a ghastly narrow valley which we called the ‘Valley of
Death.’
“The little inn at Aak is very delightful, with a large garden on the
hillside, and the views indescribably glorious--of the tremendous peaks
of pink granite, or fields of pathless snow embossed against a sky
delicately blue above, but melting into clearest opal.... There was much
in the place, as at Throndtjem, which recalled my former life, and I
seemed to go back into a lost past, to read a page long pasted down and
put away. In both places _we_ should have stayed for weeks; in both, I
could see our trio sallying out every morning with campstools and books,
making friends with the natives, or in the quiet of home life, with its
home occupations in the little inn.
“And now, after many more stations, we have passed through Lilliehammer,
and are again on the Miosen lake, speeding through the closing days of
our tour.”
* * * * *